“The technology came up empty even though both Tsarnaevs’ images exist in official databases: Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver’s license; the brothers had legally immigrated; and Tamerlan had been the subject of some FBI investigation,” the Post reported on Saturday.

Facial recognition systems can have limited utility when a grainy, low-resolution image captured at a distance from a cellphone camera or surveillance video is compared with a known, high-quality image. Meanwhile, the FBI is expected to release a large-scale facial recognition apparatus “next year for members of the Western Identification Network, a consortium of police agencies in California and eight other Western states,” according to the San Jose Mercury News.

“The work was painstaking and mind-numbing: One agent watched the same segment of video 400 times,” the Post added. “The goal was to construct a timeline of images, following possible suspects as they moved along the sidewalks, building a narrative out of a random jumble of pictures from thousands of different phones and cameras. It took a couple of days, but analysts began to focus on two men in baseball caps who had brought heavy black bags into the crowd near the marathon’s finish line but left without those bags.”

Authorities released official images to stave off Reddit

The Post also cited unnamed “law enforcement officials” who lambasted the use of Reddit and other social media sites that were attempting to work in parallel to the authorities.

“In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials,” the Post reported. “Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.”

On the science side, two Boston medical researchers called for a special autopsy test to look for the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a boxing-related brain disease. Some wonder if the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, could have been affected by the disorder due to his history as an amateur boxer. According to this theory, damage from the sport could have led him towards erratic behavior and violence.

But according to the Boston Globe, those same researchers were extremely cautious. Even if medical examiners did find the presence of CTE, it would not be proof positive of a causal link to violent and extremist behavior.

“Is it possible that some changes might have gone on in his overall functioning due to his boxing and potentially related brain disease? Yes,’’ said Dr. Robert Stern, a co-founder of the Center for the Study of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University, in an interview with the Globe. “Anything is possible. But to then jump to the disease leading to well-planned behavior like this? I couldn’t go there.’’

Promoted Comments

I followed the story on Reddit. Reddit's attempt to identify the bombers was completely wrong, not one theory even identified the black cap or the white cap guy.

While I praise most Redditors for exercising restraint by drowning out calls for vigilantism and witch-hunting, it demonstrates that most average people, sifting through incomplete evidence, lack the resources, the time, or the drive to solve crimes on their own. That is why we have police in the first place.

112 Reader Comments

“In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials,” the Post reported. “Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.”

Thought I'd quote this part to reiterate, in my opinion, the main focus of this story.

“In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials,” the Post reported. “Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.”

Thought I'd quote this part to reiterate, in my opinion, the main focus of this story.

I think you'll find that the main focus of the story is that the desired state controlled facial recognition databases were effectively useless in both *preventing* this crime and in the follow-up investigation - That this sort of tracking technology is only not a violation of civil rights only because its doesn't work.

“Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.”

If by 'news media' they mean 'New York Post', then it certainly doesn't deserve that label. 'Rabble-rouser' is a more accurate term here.

I think the people at the NY Post who are responsible for the bogus accusations and the Internet commenters who perpetuated them should be declared enemy combatants and locked away without at trial. See how they like it.

I followed the story on Reddit. Reddit's attempt to identify the bombers was completely wrong, not one theory even identified the black cap or the white cap guy.

While I praise most Redditors for exercising restraint by drowning out calls for vigilantism and witch-hunting, it demonstrates that most average people, sifting through incomplete evidence, lack the resources, the time, or the drive to solve crimes on their own. That is why we have police in the first place.

So what is the take-away here? Is this an isolated incident of the technology not working or is this just not ready for practical use?

You can interpret it to support whatever conclusions you like. You can conclude it's not good enough to justify the loss of civil liberties, or you can conclude that the resolution of the cameras was not high enough so we need more and better cameras.

I will say that this calculation may be different for a location such as the end of the marathon route than for a typical street.

So what is the take-away here? Is this an isolated incident of the technology not working or is this just not ready for practical use?

You can interpret it to support whatever conclusions you like. You can conclude it's not good enough to justify the loss of civil liberties, or you can conclude that the resolution of the cameras was not high enough so we need more and better cameras.

I will say that this calculation may be different for a location such as the end of the marathon route than for a typical street.

It's not "his" conclusion that's important. It's the ones who bought such systems and who now have to justify the failure.

“In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials,” the Post reported. “Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.”

Thought I'd quote this part to reiterate, in my opinion, the main focus of this story.

I think you'll find that the main focus of the story is that the desired state controlled facial recognition databases were effectively useless in both *preventing* this crime and in the follow-up investigation - That this sort of tracking technology is only not a violation of civil rights only because its doesn't work.

I know what the article said, one guy did the job that couldn't be done with millions of dollars worth of software and hardware. Good for him.

However, I don't think that's as important as what was said about reddit and the Internet pi's. if the FBI has to release photos to get people to stop waving pitchforks at innocent people, we have bigger things to worry about than a fucking camera noticing you walking down the street.

“In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials,” the Post reported. “Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.”

Thought I'd quote this part to reiterate, in my opinion, the main focus of this story.

Social media is a tool. The problem is that a case of this magnitude will result in an avalanche of leads for all sources including social media. The vast majority of these leads are dead ends in any of these cases. This is normal and to be expected.

The idiots complaining about dead end leads should be thankful that people are looking at their photos and videos and calling in potential leads. The problem is no one knows which apparently "bogus" lead is the correct one until it is checked out. I would not be surprised that some of the evidence used in the trial is from tipsters' photos and videos.

So what is the take-away here? Is this an isolated incident of the technology not working or is this just not ready for practical use?

Yes, the technology is not a panacea and can be fooled when used as a substitute for fingerprints and DNA. The problem is the quality and angle of the images can cause problems when compared to frontal mug shot type view.

Often, what you are really trying to do is to reduce the number potential suspects with this technology. The surveillance images give a lot information about a person's approximate size, race, gender, approximate age, etc. the eliminates most people. With this incident if you were not a white male, early to mid twenties, etc. you are not the bomber according to the images. Very important to know. The videos eliminated as potential suspects may be 80-90% of the local population as suspects automatically (wrong size, gender, race, age, etc.).

I followed the story on Reddit. Reddit's attempt to identify the bombers was completely wrong, not one theory even identified the black cap or the white cap guy.

What needs to be accepted is that the RedditFail was a systemic problem. When criticism started rolling in on Wednesday the mods on findbostonbombers spouted off about how they were acting responsibly, setting strict rules and were deleting anything with personal info, etc. None of that mattered. They'd set up a meeting point for irresponsible Junior Batmen who then went on to do their damage via twitter and facebook.

The subreddit has been deleted in shame after the outcry became insupportable. It's unfortunate that we can't go back and sift through the posts to see how the whole thing fell apart, but that was the only thing to do.

So what is the take-away here? Is this an isolated incident of the technology not working or is this just not ready for practical use?

Yes, the technology is not a panacea and can be fooled when used as a substitute for fingerprints and DNA. The problem is the quality and angle of the images can cause problems when compared to frontal mug shot type view.

Often, what you are really trying to do is to reduce the number potential suspects with this technology. The surveillance images give a lot information about a person's approximate size, race, gender, approximate age, etc. the eliminates most people. With this incident if you were not a white male, early to mid twenties, etc. you are not the bomber according to the images. Very important to know. The videos eliminated as potential suspects may be 80-90% of the local population as suspects automatically (wrong size, gender, race, age, etc.).

One unknown is how sophisticated were the systems in use? For example do they use gait information to whittle down suspects?

So what is the take-away here? Is this an isolated incident of the technology not working or is this just not ready for practical use?

You can interpret it to support whatever conclusions you like. You can conclude it's not good enough to justify the loss of civil liberties, or you can conclude that the resolution of the cameras was not high enough so we need more and better cameras.

I will say that this calculation may be different for a location such as the end of the marathon route than for a typical street.

I'm not prepared to get into an argument over the socio-political aspect of this technology. The article was about the technical merits of the system and how they failed to produce any meaningful results. Taking that then, is this a common outcome when this tech is applied, or is this case not representative of the whole?

I followed the story on Reddit. Reddit's attempt to identify the bombers was completely wrong, not one theory even identified the black cap or the white cap guy.

What needs to be accepted is that the RedditFail was a systemic problem. When criticism started rolling in on Wednesday the mods on findbostonbombers spouted off about how they were acting responsibly, setting strict rules and were deleting anything with personal info, etc. None of that mattered. They'd set up a meeting point for irresponsible Junior Batmen who then went on to do their damage via twitter and facebook.

The subreddit has been deleted in shame after the outcry became insupportable. It's unfortunate that we can't go back and sift through the posts to see how the whole thing fell apart, but that was the only thing to do.

Quote:

Rendezvous points provide location-hidden services (server anonymity) for the onion routing network. With rendezvous points, Bob can offer a TCP service (say, a webserver) via the onion routing network, without revealing the IP of that service.

Rendezvous points or findbostonbombers, people will find ways to conjugate. Technology vs social problem, once again.

It seems to me this isn't necessarily a failure of the software but evidence that the software needs a reference dataset with more than one photo in order to find a match when given a source photo of poor quality. If they had a lot of photos of the bombers from different angles in different lighting maybe they would've found a match.

It may be, however, that this is a limitation that cannot be realistically overcome.

“Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.”

If by 'news media' they mean 'New York Post', then it certainly doesn't deserve that label. 'Rabble-rouser' is a more accurate term here.

I think the people at the NY Post who are responsible for the bogus accusations and the Internet commenters who perpetuated them should be declared enemy combatants and locked away without at trial. See how they like it.

NY Post is owned by News Corp, Rupert Murdoch. Hmmmm ... and what happened to News Of The World?

“In addition to being almost universally wrong, the theories developed via social media complicated the official investigation, according to law enforcement officials,” the Post reported. “Those officials said Saturday that the decision on Thursday to release photos of the two men in baseball caps was meant in part to limit the damage being done to people who were wrongly being targeted as suspects in the news media and on the Internet.”

Thought I'd quote this part to reiterate, in my opinion, the main focus of this story.

Social media is a tool. The problem is that a case of this magnitude will result in an avalanche of leads for all sources including social media. The vast majority of these leads are dead ends in any of these cases. This is normal and to be expected.

The idiots complaining about dead end leads should be thankful that people are looking at their photos and videos and calling in potential leads. The problem is no one knows which apparently "bogus" lead is the correct one until it is checked out. I would not be surprised that some of the evidence used in the trial is from tipsters' photos and videos.

The problem is when people publicly accuse others of a crime with no real evidence mob mentality kicks in. There's a reason the police don't post all the information they've gathered in a day on their Facebook and Twitter accounts, because it's a work in progress and pointing the finger at the wrong person could get them harassed, shot or lynched! If people wanted to help they should have just sent their photos of the event to the Boston PD or FBI. Not all communication should be posted on message boards!

On the science side, two Boston medical researchers called for a special autopsy test to look for the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a boxing-related brain disease.

Please don't call this science.

We know that he was a religious Muslim who used bombs like the ones used in Afghanistan, Iraq , Times Square and other Islamic terrorists attacks. He prayed 5 times a day, his Youtube account linked to videos of Islamist preachers calling for the deaths of Americans.

Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

Why ignore the obvious in the name of political correctness?

Seems I've been down-voted because people with trouble reading think I said something along the lines of all Muslims are terrorists. If that's what you saw, re-read my comment.

The absolute superiority of the human brain at facial recognition cannot be denied. When tens of thousands of human brains are linked in a common cause for facial recognition, that ability becomes prodigious if not 100% effective 100% of the time. And rightly so--putting a name with a face demands sentience, and the brain can process visual information that would be indecipherable to the finest of machine scanning and programming.

The problem with the facial data is not technical, it has to do with the kind of crime performed.

Any action like this is sudden, and out of the blue. These are not career criminals breaking into places here, beating up someone there. These are people that until the day they start shooting and/or detonating walk the street like everyone else with a job and a family. The only way to guard against such actions will be to flip the "innocent until proven guilty" principle on its head.

On the science side, two Boston medical researchers called for a special autopsy test to look for the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a boxing-related brain disease.

Please don't call this science.

We know that he was a religious Muslim who used bombs like the ones used in Afghanistan, Iraq , Times Square and other Islamic terrorists attacks. He prayed 5 times a day, his Youtube account linked to videos of Islamist preachers etc.

Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

Why ignore the obvious in the name of political correctness?

Did CTE predispose him towards radical action? Or was he a radical to begin with, and CTE simply made it worse?

On the science side, two Boston medical researchers called for a special autopsy test to look for the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a boxing-related brain disease.

Please don't call this science.

We know that he was a religious Muslim who used bombs like the ones used in Afghanistan, Iraq , Times Square and other Islamic terrorists attacks. He prayed 5 times a day, his Youtube account linked to videos of Islamist preachers etc.

Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

Why ignore the obvious in the name of political correctness?

Being a devout muslim isn't a problem. There are hundreds of millions of them that don't wish 'death to america' and have no desire to lob a bomb at you.

There are also similar number of devout catholics or so-called "christians" [as there are muslims that wish to kill you] that ARE willing to lob a bomb at you because you don't believe what they do.

It's just easy for you to link the religion with the violence because it's not YOUR religion.

I am actually happy that ge technology doesn't work. Its great to be able to use cctv in cases like that. But it's good that it is so expensive to use that you cannot prosecute cases of pocket theft or public urination

When people oversimplify complex problems, they are doing no one any favors. Sadly, too many people do just this (often out of intellectual laziness), and the true roots of the problems never get properly addressed.

On the science side, two Boston medical researchers called for a special autopsy test to look for the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a boxing-related brain disease.

Please don't call this science.

We know that he was a religious Muslim who used bombs like the ones used in Afghanistan, Iraq , Times Square and other Islamic terrorists attacks. He prayed 5 times a day, his Youtube account linked to videos of Islamist preachers etc.

Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

Why ignore the obvious in the name of political correctness?

Being a devout muslim isn't a problem. There are hundreds of millions of them that don't wish 'death to america' and have no desire to lob a bomb at you.

There are also similar number of devout catholics or so-called "christians" [as there are muslims that wish to kill you] that ARE willing to lob a bomb at you because you don't believe what they do.

It's just easy for you to link the religion with the violence because it's not YOUR religion.

Try reading what I wrote again. His Youtube account linked to (and favorited) speeches by extremists calling for acts of violence against Christians and Jews. He clearly supported Islamic extremism. And he used the types of bombs used by Islamic extremists.

When people oversimplify complex problems, they are doing no one any favors. Sadly, too many people do just this (often out of intellectual laziness), and the true roots of the problems never get properly addressed.

"True roots" when it comes to violence is something people have been wrestling for decades and we're still far away from an answer.

On the science side, two Boston medical researchers called for a special autopsy test to look for the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a boxing-related brain disease.

Please don't call this science.

We know that he was a religious Muslim who used bombs like the ones used in Afghanistan, Iraq , Times Square and other Islamic terrorists attacks. He prayed 5 times a day, his Youtube account linked to videos of Islamist preachers etc.

Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

Why ignore the obvious in the name of political correctness?

Did CTE predispose him towards radical action? Or was he a radical to begin with, and CTE simply made it worse?

Occam's razor is about not adding unnecessary hypotheses. There is clear link between the bombers and Islamic extremism. There is a clear link between Islamic extremism and violence. There is no link between CTE and Islamic extremism. Why hypothesize one now when we don't even know that he had CTE? (particularly when his younger brother engaged in the same acts of terrorism and CTE is extremely rare in young amateur boxers).

We know that he was a religious Muslim who used bombs like the ones used in Afghanistan, Iraq , Times Square and other Islamic terrorists attacks. He prayed 5 times a day, his Youtube account linked to videos of Islamist preachers etc.

Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

Why ignore the obvious in the name of political correctness?

Has anyone ever cared if the killers of Aurora or Newtown were religious Christians? Why is always religion so important if it's a Muslim and of no importance at all if it isn't a Muslim? What about the people killed by "Hellfire" missiles in Pakistan, controlled and fired by people who often sound in the same way religiously fanatic as muslim terrorists? Isn't this a kind of Christian terrorism? Are people who pray two times a day less religious than those who pray five times a day?

Call this "political correctness" of you want. If you don't like asking tough questions any amount of political incorrectness won't help you very much to understand what's going on. Blaming all 1.5 billion Muslims for what a Muslim does isn't part of the solution, it's part of the problem. Often it's just thinly veiled racism. (Often on both sides of course.)

Personally I wouldn't be very surprised if this was very much the same kind of killing spree we see over and over from people of all backgrounds. Frustrated youth rationalizing themselves with everything at hand into killing lots of other people and going out with a bang. It would be very strange if there wouldn't be a Muslim among them now and then. It would also be very strange if a Muslim then wouldn't rationalize this with "fighting for his faith" or whatever. As long as most Muslims don't do such things it still won't be the explanation for everything.

On the science side, two Boston medical researchers called for a special autopsy test to look for the presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a boxing-related brain disease.

Please don't call this science.

We know that he was a religious Muslim who used bombs like the ones used in Afghanistan, Iraq , Times Square and other Islamic terrorists attacks. He prayed 5 times a day, his Youtube account linked to videos of Islamist preachers etc.

Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

Why ignore the obvious in the name of political correctness?

Did CTE predispose him towards radical action? Or was he a radical to begin with, and CTE simply made it worse?

Occam's razor is about not adding unnecessary hypotheses. There is clear link between the bombers and Islamic extremism. There is a clear link between Islamic extremism and violence. There is no link between CTE and Islamic extremism. Why hypothesize one now when we don't even know that he had CTE? (particularly when his younger brother engaged in the same acts of terrorism and CTE is extremely rare in young amateur boxers).

Science does not work that way.

So if a student studying violence browses Islamic extremism sites, does "Occam" say this person will turn into a bomber? There's a "clear link" there.